Seeing the world: Rowan historian’s book explains how travel shaped American Jewish women

During more than 20 years of research for several previous books about American Jewish women and girls in the 19th and 20th centuries, Melissa R. Klapper, Ph.D., discovered a common theme of travel.

“I noticed that they traveled abroad more often than I might have expected during the late 1800s and early 1900s,” said Klapper. “I put that observation aside for a while but then decided to investigate whether travel abroad was a common enough experience to be meaningful to American Jewish history and American women's history. As soon as I started diving into the archives, I found right away that there was more than enough material for a book.”

A professor of history and director of Women’s & Gender Studies at Rowan University, Klapper’s newest book, “Jewish Women at Home in the World: Gender, Judaism, and American Identity in the Rise of Mass Tourism,” looks at the role that gender and Jewish identity, as well as their American background, played in the women’s choices of where to go, what to do, whom to see and how to behave.

Seeing the world

Published by NYU Press this month, “Jewish Women at Home in the World” details the rise of American Jewish women’s mass tourism between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of World War II. Traveling for work and leisure, these women visited relatives, went to school overseas, secured jobs abroad, attended international activist meetings, and took sightseeing trips alone, with family members or friends, or with organized tour groups.

Klapper found first-person accounts by the women in 18 archives across the United States including the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati, the American Jewish Historical Society in New York and the Schlesinger Library on the History of American Women at Harvard University.

“The diaries, travel journals, letters, postcards and scrapbooks at the heart of my research are not digitized, often because women's voices are still sometimes muted in the historical record,” she said. “This material requires in-person, hands-on research.”

While Americans have traveled for leisure and education since the early days of American history, this particular period saw a rise of mass tourism because of the changes in the way travel operated. Industrialization opened the world in new ways for millions of people.

“It is important to know that globalization as we understand it today has a really long history that includes regular people traveling for leisure, education, work, activism and heritage—not just trade and commerce,” said Klapper. “Changes in technology like steam/coal-powered ships made travel more accessible to more people after the Civil War, so travel wasn't just for the wealthiest people anymore.” 

A journey of growth and discovery

Klapper’s research reveals how, at the time, visiting overseas enhanced American Jewish women's status and often challenged conventional gender roles as they experienced more autonomy. The book explores how going abroad reinforced their Jewish identity, particularly in the face of unsettling encounters with antisemitism.

“The women I write about were a kind of informal ambassador for Americans, women and Jews, and they especially helped create a stronger sense of diasporic Jewish identity that drew people of many nations together.”

Learning more

Klapper also is the author of “Jewish Girls Coming of Age in America: 1860-1920” (NYU Press, 2007); “Small Strangers: The Experiences of Immigrant Children in the United States, 1880-1925” (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2007); “Ballots, Babies and Banners of Peace: American Jewish Women’s Activism, 1890-1940” (NYU Press, 2014), winner of a National Jewish Book Award; and “Ballet Class: An American History” (Oxford University Press, 2020). Most recently, Klapper completed the work of her Rowan colleague, Dianne Ashton, who passed away in 2022 and published “The Civil War Diary of Emma Mordecai” (NYU Press) in 2024.

Klapper will discuss “Jewish Women at Home in the World,” followed by a Q&A and a book signing, at an author talk on Wednesday, Oct. 21, from 11 a.m. to 12:15 p.m., at Rowan’s Hollybush Mansion. This event is open to the public. She also will present her book at a series of virtual and in-person events through March.